Pretty Soldiers
by HSFawks
Summary: AU. An evil organization is hunting the Silver Crystal. Only Minako, still Sailor V, stands in their way. She must find the other three senshi and the princess before the evil finds the Crystal and uses its power for conquest. But Minako always believed SHE was the princess. She's reluctant to give up fame to become part of a team. Is saving the world worth losing herself?
1. Act 0

**Disclaimer: **Sailor Moon, the Sailor Moon universe, and all associated characters are owned by Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha publishing, and Toei Animation. I do not claim the rights to any of these characters or properties. I am not recieving any compensation for writing this story.

**Author's Note: **This story is inspired by a post made by Frizzy on her tumblr, sailorfailures. Frizzy one day wants to make a Sailor Moon web-series set in Australia with Mina(ko) as the main character and the Death Busters and Black Moon family working together as the villians. I have borrowed these ideas from her. If you haven't, I highly recommend checking out Sailorfailures. It's a great blog. Other than that, the plot elements come from me re-working things from various Sailor Moon canons. Spoilers thourgh S (both the anime and manga), all of Code Name Sailor V, PGSM, and the second stage of the Sailor Moon musicals.

**Act 0**

Professor Tomoe couldn't believe what was happening. Since his break through studying black holes—the discovery that gravitational fields could be strong enough to actually _bend and redirect energy_ which _became dark matter_, meaning virtually the entire universe was made up of potential energy—he'd been working almost exclusively on the problem of time travel.

His colleagues had petitioned and had him expelled from the Imperial Science Institute, but they hadn't believed in his work on black holes either until he'd proven his hypothesis. This time they said opening a potential worm hole was dangerous, but what great scientific mind had ever played it safe? It infuriated him that the others couldn't see it. Obviously, something had to compress matter enough to cause the Big Bang. What could be capable of that but a super massive black hole? A black hole of that magnitude could easily have warped and compressed enough energy to fill the Milky Way with dark matter, not to mention the energy that was released in the explosion itself.

He'd strove for years to get the grant from the Netherlands to buy the parts for a very small hadron collider. He'd had to build his own technical academy to finance his lab on the tuition fees, but it had all been worth it for this moment.

He watched in awe, face showing more delight than the day his only daughter had been born. The colored lines on the computer screen were spiking and very slowly spinning into a tiny circular outline. A hole was opening between dimensions. A hole was opening in _time._

Tomoe couldn't be the only witness to this momentous event. He rushed to the intercom and hit the button for the family room. "Keiko!" He called, voice brimming on the hysterical with joy, "Hurry to the lab and bring Hotaru! She needs to be able to tell this story one day! I've done it, Keiko! I've done it!"

"Dear, I—" Keiko tried to answer, but the professor had already cut the volume. She stared at the intercom. This must be really big. Souiichi never wanted anyone in the lab. She picked up Hotaru, and with the little girl, made her way downstairs.

"Souichi, what have you done exactly?" Keiko asked as she pushed open the heavy white door.

Professor Tomoe kissed his wife and spun his daughter through the air. "I've made a worm hole! I've _proven time travel_! I've opened a space between dimensions!" He pulled them over to several monitors. "You can't see it, but look here," he pointed to the swirling circle on the screens. It was better defined than it had been seconds ago. "It's there! There in the centrifuge!"

Keiko turned to look at the seven foot spinning metal hoop. "Darling, I believe you…but is this proof?"

"That _math_ proves it, Keiko! The math!" Professor Tomoe said back excitedly.

"Can you send something through it?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Who knows what's on the other side or even what's inside it. Untold damage could be done by sticking things through a hole in space-time. The practical applications will take several more years of work."

Keiko nodded. She was a pharmacologist. Good, practical, money making science, but never the less, she was proud of her husband. She had to admit, this was something that would definitely make history. She slipped her arm around his back, and he wrapped his around her waist.

He'd done it.

Then his lab exploded.

_Tick_

_This must be what pain feels like, _Professor Tomoe thought, _this is the kind of pain war survivors talk about._ He tried to open his eyes, but only one obeyed. He was covered in something warm and sticky and metallic. _Blood,_ the thought, _I'm covered in blood, only there's no way I could have lost this much blood and be conscious._ The world was slowly forming out of blurs and vague shapes and he realized he was looking up at the sky. He'd been in his basement. How was he looking at the sky? It took him three tries to raise his head. When he finally did, he realized a piece of what used to be the ceiling was sticking out of his leg.

Then he remembered the blood. All that blood that couldn't possibly be all his. He started to scream.

Professor Tomoe couldn't stand but he began dragging himself around the debris the best he could. His hands were quickly becoming cut and splintered messes and moving hurt more than staying still and he hadn't thought that was possible, but that wasn't what was important. "Keiko! Hotaru!" He yelled, voice hoarse with desperation.

Less than a meter away from him, under a beam and a huge sheet of plaster, he saw blood pooling. It felt like it took him a week to push it aside, and when he had, he wished it were back in place.

If he didn't know what was below the sheet used to be Keiko, he would never have been able to tell. She was facing down and her back had been crushed. One arm was missing and the side of her head was open. Grey matter flecked everything around the body. Her skin looked burned. He wondered if his was too. He started to cry.

Then something beneath what used to be Keiko moved and he was very, very sick. _Hotaru._ He repeated the name over and over to give him the strength to move the ruined body. He did not want to see what used to be Keiko's face.

Hotaru was breathing. Barely. Her arms and legs were twisted into angles human limbs should not form. She was horribly bruised, but she was breathing.

"Hotaru, baby, please," Professor Tomoe sobbed not knowing what to do. She was five years old.

"You created a rip in the Great Fabric. You are lucky it was miniscule or the damage could have been catastrophic. You did this, but you can save her," a deep voice said.

Professor Tomoe whipped his head toward the sound so quickly he was almost sick again. What appeared to be a shadow clocked in a black robe floated near where the centrifuge had once been. "Just tell me how," he pleaded, so far past caring who or what the thing was.

"If you make a deal with me, I will grant her the power to live. It will not heal her body, but she will not die."

"Do it. Anything. Please."

"There are laws of exchange. I cannot do this for free or it will throw the universe out of balance. To save her, I must imbed within your daughter the Malific Black Crystal, an unparalleled power source. I will do this if you will help me save _my_ family."

"Yes. Yes. Just save her," Professor Tomoe chocked out.

The figure floated over to Hotaru's tiny, crumpled body and laid it's gnarled, shadowy hands on her chest. After several long moments, her breath deepened, then labored, then evened out again. Very slowly, her eyes opened.

"Papa, it hurts," she said in a very weak voice as tears ran down her face.

"Oh, my darling, my baby, Hotaru," Professor Tomoe pressed his face to her hair. When he'd regained some measure of control over himself he looked up at the shadow again. "And my wife?"

"She is dead. I can do nothing for her. However, there are ways to recreate her…" The shadow raised its hands and three people stepped out from the wreckage from around the centrifuge. They each had a curved black shape on their foreheads. "You may call me Wise Man and these are my disciples. We will help you now, and then, Good Doctor, you and I will have a very long and rewarding talk."


	2. Act 1

**Standard disclaimer applies (see Act 0)**

**Once again, this story was inspired by a post by Frizzy on her tumblr, sailorfailures. You should go check out her blog because it is rad.**

**Act 1**

_Tick_

Three very different people in three very different places were having the exact same dream. The world was frozen in a silence so complete it could have been a solid substance. A great vortex of darkness and wind tore through Tokyo like it was a paper city. It erased everything in its path leaving a clean expanse of nothingness behind it. Buildings crumbled on mute. Bodies stood like statues cast in ode to flight and terror then dissipated. The dream panned over a group of young women just as still and hopeless as all the others. They wore short skirts and bows and the dreamers felt an increased sense of fear and despair when the darkness pulled them too apart. _The Messiah,_ the dreamers screamed. _The Messiah has come_, except when they opened their mouths no sound came out and their eyes filled with light.

_Tick_

The priestess awoke, no stranger to visions and went to sit before her fire.

_Tick_

The high school boy awoke, no stranger to bizarre dreams and went to make a cup of coffee.

_Tick_

The guardian of time opened her eyes. She never slept because if time never passes for you, you never grow tired and night never comes. She sometimes described her glimpses of the past and future as dreams because others slept and others had dreams and no one made words for what she did. She struck her key on what could have been ground but wasn't before the great door that was her eternal station and what could have been stone but wasn't groaned as it opened. She peered into the expanse of Time and knew exactly what the dream meant. She stepped into the time stream, abandoning her post.

_Tick_

"Are you tired, Mamo?" Usagi Tsukino slid his glasses off his face and kissed his cheek. He usually only wore them to read, and he usually was reading when she showed up, but this morning he was sitting forward with his hands folded in front of his chin and his eyes somewhere in the middle distance.

"Hmm? Oh, Usako, you're on time." He hadn't even realized she'd sat down next to him until she'd touched him. He smiled at her and she smiled back having already gotten over being offended that he was surprised by her punctuality. They'd been dating for months now, but the pet name still made her chest tight. She wondered if it would ever stop having that effect on her.

He nodded and passed her the pink and white paper bag from his other side. He'd been thinking of the strange dream. It was new this time. He usually dreamed of a beautiful woman in a white dress that he couldn't reach. This dream was completely different, but something about it felt the same and the girls in the weird costumes looked so familiar. They probably were. It wasn't like he could remember anything before he was nine anyway. He briefly considered calling his therapist again, that thought evaporated into trying to remember what Usagi had asked. "I have an exam coming up," he said. It wasn't entirely a lie. He probably did have an exam coming up. It seemed he always had an exam coming up.

Usagi accepted this excuse readily, already more focused on the bag and its delicious secrets. Mamoru attended Moto-Azabu High, a school far more demanding that her own public Juuban Municipal Junior High. He also had his sights set on K University. He was only a first year, so entrance exams were still two years away, but students started studying in elementary school for institutions like K. "Well, good luck! Not that you'll need it," she said with one of those big sincere smiles that made him feel terrible.

Almost every morning, unless Mamoru had an early session or lab duty, or Usagi overslept or had detention…so actually about twice a week, they met in the park halfway between their homes and their schools and ate breakfast. Their schools were fairly close together, in fact they'd met by running into each other on their way to local popular afternoon hangouts, but Usagi lived on the west side of Juuban in the suburbs and Mamoru lived in a high rise on the east side of the district near the harbor.

The bag held two steamed curry buns and two chocolate and fruit parfaits with little flat wooden spoons clicked inside the tops of the cups. It took a ridiculous amount of will power for Usagi to pass Mamoru his share and she winced at the way he picked at the food. Finally, after she'd been done eating for several minutes, he passed her half his curry bun and the parfait he'd only eaten the chocolate off. Usagi finished them in less bites than could possibly healthy, but Mamoru had long ago stopped worrying about her choking.

He checked his watch. "We need to get going or we'll be late."

Usagi looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think we should take our time. Me being before the bell so often is starting to worry Ms. Haruna. I _need_ to be late or I'm going to be responsible for her death. I'm too young and adorable to handle that."

Mamoru laughed and pulled Usagi up from the bench. She only tripped twice before she made it to school.

When he kissed her goodbye outside the gates of Juuban Municipal, she still tasted like strawberries and vanilla.

_Tick_

"Minako!" three voices called, but the loudest was a sobbing middle aged man. Minako Aino was caught in the crushing embrace of bother her parents and her best friend, Hikaru. They knocked her off balance and the pet carrier she was holding swung in her hand. Her cat screeched in fear, but no one seemed to notice.

Minako laughed with what little breath she had left. "I'm so happy to see you all again too!" They let go and she hugged each of them in turn. "Hikaru! You're almost as tall as I am now! Who am I going to tease?" She and Hikaru entwined their fingers as they and Minako's parents walked as a group to the baggage claim because Minako's father couldn't be persuaded to be separated from her from an instant, much less to cross the airport to get her bags.

"Though you're still awfully flat chested," Mina whispered into her friend's ear.

Hikaru playfully punched her for that, knowing Minako didn't have a free hand to retaliate with. She whispered back, "Had plenty of fried fish and chips haven't we? Hmmm? Someone is going to need a lot of private volleyball practice before getting back into those bloomers."

Minako tried to make a suitably offended face, but it was hopeless. Both girls dissolved into giggles.

"You have to tell us all about Europe! Were you disappointed or happy you spent most of the time in London?" Minko's mother asked.

"Too much time in London!" her father sobbed again and caught her in a hug so fierce he almost picked her up.

"It was only nine months!" Minako said flailing, her poor cat slid around yowling some more. Something in her father's back popped ominously and he quickly let her go to brace it with his hands.

Laughing, Minako's mother ran a hand through her daughter's long bleached brown hair. She knocked Mina's trademark red bow askew then straightened it. "World travel hasn't broken you of your Sailor V obsession I see," she said kindly.

"Of course not!" Minako beamed at her. "_Europe was marvelous and I loved London_," she added in accented English.

Her parents and best friend stared at her, obviously not understanding. "My English got pretty good," she elaborated. "I'll tell you all about Europe as soon as we get home." She looked at her parents hopefully. "Over some tea and cakes?"

"We'll stop by the bakery on the way home!" Her father said happy to provide anything and everything for his darling little girl.

_Tick_

Three customers sat around a table in a bakery staring into their tea cups. A very excited salary man came in, made a show of himself, and bought half the place's tiny cakes, but they never looked up. The first was in a short dress in a hue of purple that only she could possibly wear without looking ridiculous. She was obviously foreign and the color looked striking against her dark skin. The other two were dressed in matching school uniforms from some private academy, one for male students and one for female students.

"And you can't see anything else? Not even with the Garnet Orb?" the one in pants asked.

The dark woman shook her head. "Not past what I've already told you," she said turning to the female student. She was gorgeous with jet black hair that fell in soft waves past her shoulders, a perfectly oval shaped face, and big, disarmingly sweet eyes. "Have you had any luck with your mirror?"

The beautiful one sighed and spoke with a tone unaccustomed to failure. "It shows me a stormy sea that gets darker and darker until I can see nothing else. The blackness stays until I stop trying. It's so frustrating. I'm beginning to think the thing is useless."

"It showed you me." The one in the boy's uniform and the beautiful one locked eyes for a long moment, then quickly looked away as if nothing had happened. The beautiful one became very interested in stirring her already cold tea. The one in the boy's uniform ran a hand through short bleached blond hair that drew attention, but this was not the type of person to care much for social conventions. "So we're still at square one? You know, I'm usually happy I don't have to deal with all of the premonition stuff like you two, but this just dicking around is killing me. If I'm on a mission here, I need some action. I need to be _doing_ something."

The speech was awkward and full of glances back at the beautiful one. The dark woman took a sip of her tea to cover her smile. It wouldn't do well to antagonize them just because she knew what their future would hold. If they had a future that was…that thought took the smile off her face. "Haruka, we are not just…err…'dicking around'." She said the phrase with obvious distaste. "We're hunting. We will find the Messiah of Silence before she awakens and we will kill her."

_Tick_

It was late. Well after midnight, but Minako couldn't sleep. She had plans to go to an amusement park with Hikaru and their other friends—girls from their last year's class, the volleyball team, and a few other members of Minako's talent agency. It was such a simple, normal thing. A fun afternoon with friends, but she might as well have been going halfway around the planet again.

She and her friends were in different worlds. They had been before she ever left for Europe.

Minako would never get tired of talking about being a background singer for a pop idol because it meant she had something to talk about to keep side stepping the giant secret that dominated her life. She didn't even care that the agency had picked her because she was cute and could memorize wacky dance moves quickly and not for her voice. She pitied the sound engineer who was probably still slaving away in London to get her on key with the other girls. She had no illusions about being able to sing, but she also had no shame and there was always a place in show business for cute girls with no shame.

Being on stage with all the lights and the cheers should have felt like magic, but it was just another front. Minako had known what real magic was like since she'd found a talking cat two years ago. Real magic was far more powerful and far more dangerous than fame. Real magic could get you killed very quickly if you didn't think fast and react faster. She'd defeated the Dark Kingdom and the stragglers that had run away to Europe to try to rehash their scheme of using stolen human energy to awaken their evil ruler.

Now, the fight was over and she wondered how she was ever going to go back to normal. She wanted to. She wanted nothing more. She could finally rejoin the volleyball team. She could use her tour money to take vocal and acting lessons. She had things to put on a resume now and could chase her dreams wholeheartedly.

But…She thought of her father's happy tears and her mother's hand in her hair and Hikaru's whispers in her ear. When had she learned to lie so easily? Was she really going to lie all day tomorrow to her friends? Her friends who hadn't had to fight for their lives. Her friends who hadn't killed monsters and evil queens and men that may or may not have been monsters but were certainly monstrous. Her friends who weren't always looking over their shoulders. Her friends who hadn't watched the only boy they'd ever kissed die just to buy them time to get to the next fight.

Her friends who weren't the reincarnated princesses of a fallen galaxy wide empire.

When she closed her eyes she saw herself spun in a cocoon of lies so thin and so fragile she wondered if she'd be able to stay inside it now that she no longer had a world to protect. She repeated the mantra that had gotten her through so many nights. At least she got to be a princess; at least she got to be famous. She obviously couldn't sue for royalty checks but Sailor V even had her own cartoon show. At least she got to be important; at least she got to cheat on her homework with a pen that only wrote the truth.

She must have drifted off because she awoke when her cat landed heavily on her stomach. She snapped upright. "Artemis, what the hell!"

"Minako, the compact," he said, softly and seriously. He was a faint white shape with a crescent moon above his eyes that only she could see.

His tone threw her off and her mind began racing. Her room should be dark, she'd drawn her curtains to keep out the street lights, but she could clearly see the moon on Artemis's head. Slowly, fearfully, she turned to her window. There was a yellow glow coming from the corner of the sill that was far too bright to be from the night leaking in.

She'd set her compact there to charge in the moonlight because she was sure she'd never be able to sleep without a weapon in arm's reach even if she knew she'd never actually have to use it again. The compact glowed when there was danger. It glowed when the world needed Sailor V.

Minako shook her head. "No," she whispered. "Artemis, no. I beat them. I beat Queen Beryl and her monsters and I hunted down Zoicite and Kunzite when they got away. There is no one left to resurrect Queen Metalia. There's no one left. I beat them, Artemis." She was crying now because she knew it was true and that the compact couldn't be wrong. There was something else out there she was going to have to fight and if there was something after Metalia, there would be something after that too. "Please, Artemis, don't make me transform."

Artemis sat on the edge of her bed and looked straight through her the way only a cat could. "It's not up to me," he said sadly. But they both knew that if it were up to him he would make her transform just as surely as they knew she was going to transform anyway.

Minako sniffed and wiped her sleeve across her face, drying her tears as she threw off her covers and Artemis with them. When she spoke again, her voice was steady but hollow. "I'm so tired." She plunged off her bed and started digging through one of the many open suitcases on the floor.

"What are you doing?!" Artemis snapped, trying to untangle himself from the ball of blankets.

"I'm looking for my transformation pen," Minako hissed back at him.

"You packed it away!?" He was so loud with shock he was momentarily afraid he'd woken her parents.

Minako glared. Her face was fiercely illuminated by the compact. She was dry eyed now, but the tear stains shown in the light. Artemis immediately shrunk back. Even without looking, Mina's hands never stopped digging through her clothes. It was only a few seconds before her fingers closed around an all too familiar shape.

"MOON PRISIM POWER, TRANSFORM!"

Minako was enveloped in yellow light and when it disappeared, she was no more. Her brown hair had gone blonde and grown much longer, her dark eyes turned blue, her complexion changed. All that was left of Minako Aino was the red bow in her hair. She was now Sailor V the Sailor Suited Champion of Beauty and Justice.

_Tick_

She was on a balcony and he was convinced everything would make sense if he could only reach her. "Bring me the crystal," she whispered. He didn't know how it reached him through the distance and the wind and the fog. The white dress swirled around her. He felt like he was running but she was never any closer. "I need the crystal," she whispered again. "I can tell you everything if you only bring me the crystal."

Mamoru's eyes opened slowly. He was in that strange state between consciousness and sleep. His limbs felt heavy, but they were moving quickly of their own accord. He felt himself lacing shoes and buttoning buttons, pulling on a black jacket and fastening a grinning mask over his face. Then he was off his balcony and down the fire escape moving in a way he shouldn't know how to move.

_Tick_

This was not the way Sailor V's fights usually went.

She'd shown up, posed and prepared to give a rousing speech to the awaiting single monster. Then she'd just been slammed. She was currently surrounded by ten or so horrible, clanking mannequins. They looked like ball jointed dolls but they were just so _fast_. Their torsos were on their bodies backwards and their faces had horrible wide eyes, stringy dry hair, and too wide mouths from which poured some sort of digital noise. She turned, knees bent to spring, looking for an opening and saw nothing.

The mannequins advanced closer.

Sailor V raised her compact and yelled, "VENUS POWER, LOVE CRESCENT SHOWER!"

Golden light erupted from her compact before exploding overhead and rocketing down like meteors. The light rained onto the mannequins and they shattered apart with a hollow clatter. The pieces were left scattered around the dark spots in the cement left by V's attack.

Artemis jumped down from a nearby awning and joined Sailor V in examining the now defeated enemies. Some of the faces looked different, pretty even with sweet features, closed eyes and softly curled hair. Sailor V used a heeled foot to roll one of the terrifying faces over which reveal the pretty one on the other side. She shuddered.

"Look at this," Artemis said, pointing a paw at one of the dismembered torsos. The "front" side of the backwards torso had a black crystal stuck in the chest that was pulsing with a faint light. "It's like a heartbeat," he said.

V put a hand to her own chest. "It's on the wrong side."

Artemis shook his head. "Not if you think about how they were standing. This looks like the front of a human's chest, but it was their back."

"These things are making my head hurt—" V would have gone on, but she was interrupted by an alarm followed closely by a scream from inside the closest building.

She instantly fell into a fighting stance and spun toward the plate glass window of the jewelry shop just in time to see more mannequin robot monsters walk right out through the glass. Behind them, two more drug an old man and a young girl. They were bleeding from being pulled through the broken glass and the girl was yelling for her grandfather who was now either dead or unconscious.

Sailor V raised her compact again, but her arm was pulled back down and pinned to her body. The compact went flying then rolled and skidded several meters down the road. She heard that cold digital sound again and watched wide eyed as the scattered pieces of the monsters around her reassembled themselves.

"Shit!" She cursed, slamming her leg back. "SAILOR V KICK!"

The mannequin holding her seemed impervious to pain. It began to squeeze and V tried to push her weight up to throw it. It was light and she knew it was hollow, but she couldn't get the momentum up. Another one latched its arms around her neck. She was thrashing, but their grip was impossible. "Artemis! Get my compact!"

"I can't!" He called back. She couldn't turn her head to see, but she knew that meant they were holding him too.

"WORLD SHAKING!" The road beneath V's feet vibrated and a great ball of yellow light circled past V and took out the mannequin monsters behind her, but _not the ones holding her_.

She saw a blur off white run past in the direction of her compact. At least Artemis was free.

"DEEP SUBMERGE!" A blue sphere of light with a sound like rushing water whipped around the monsters holding the girl and her father. Just as with V, the mannequins holding them were left intact.

Three sailor suited women walked into the illuminated circles of the street lights. One was in black and dark red with long black hair and dark skin. She carried a staff that was taller than she was. It vaguely resembled a key and was topped with a large red ball. She walked in front of the other two who were in blue.

The one with the staff began stabbing it into the black crystal "hearts" of the dismantled mannequins. The crystals shattered on impact and the mannequin pieces evaporated. The other two went walked up to the captives. By now, V was having a very hard time breathing.

The blue and yellow one with the short blond hair approached the mannequin holding the man. It jerked to the side, but the man's weight slowed it down and she was ready for it. She drew a wickedly curved scimitar from the thick chain around her hips and drove it into the monster's crystal. It dropped the man and fell apart.

_It's about time they save us_, V thought indignantly as the one in blue and…well…blue with teal hair walked toward her, but neither she nor Blue-and-Yellow made any attempt to save V or the girl as the monsters' grips kept tightening.

Artemis launched himself at the mannequin holding V, compact in his mouth. He tried to climb his way up, but the woman in all blue snatched the compact from him and sent him flying in a white heap into the curb.

"Who are yo—" V almost chocked out. Why had they destroyed all of the monsters but these three? Why had they freed the man? Why weren't they _saving them_? The mannequins kept walking at them too, but they were too stupid to let go of V and the girl and did little more than bump into the new people who kept pushing them back.

V's vision was starting to swirl. This was bad. She had to breathe. _Why weren't they saving her?_

Had the woman with the staff approached? It was getting harder to tell who was moving where. "Look, they caught Sailor V," the woman in all blue said. "What do you think she was doing here? Wasn't she last seen in London? Do you think she could share our objective?"

"I don't think so…" the woman with the staff trailed off.

"Could she be….?"

"If Sailor V were the one, she would have awoken by now."

"But this mark on her forehead…" With a mirror, the woman in all blue smashed the crystal hearts of the mannequins holding V.

Sailor V pulled a lung fulls of air. A million questions flashed through her mind—_why are you dressed similar to me? How did you know how to defeat those mannequin monsters? How are you able to use those powers? Why did it take you so long to save me? Who are you? What's your objective?—_ but she was just so busy _breathing_. However, when the woman in all blue grabbed her from behind and swept her feet out from under her so all she could say was, "What?!"

V crumbled to her knees with her arms pinned to her back. That seemed to be the theme of th evening.

"It's not her," the woman with the staff said.

Only then did V notice the girl still being held by the monster and the woman in yellow and blue just _standing there_. "What are you doing?! You have to save her!"

The woman in blue twisted her arms. "Be quiet and wait."

"She's going to die!"

"If we save her we all might die," the woman with the staff said.

The girl's eye's fluttered and then rolled back until they were all whites. Her body jerked. The movement almost resembled that of the mannequins. V had to look away. "Please! She's dying! You don't even know her! Let me go and _I'll_ save her!" She struggled but the woman holding her was stronger.

The girl went limp.

A figure dropped from the awning of the shop that Artemis had occupied earlier that night. It seemed to be a man wearing a tuxedo. His hair was slicked back and his face was covered in a white grinning mask

"Great, another weirdo," V said, voice shaking. "Will _you_ save her? Please!"

He spun a gleaming black cane and thrust it through the monster's crystal.

"If you knew to do that, how long have you just been hiding up there letting her get strangled!?" V demanded.

He said nothing. He stood between the girl and the group of women with his cane raised.

"And who the fuck is this!?" Blue-And-Yellow yelled, pivoting at the waist to look back at Woman-With-Staff.

Staff was wide eyed. "I don't know."

"_You_ don't know?!" both blues said together in shock.

"Just pull out. If it were her, the stress would have awakened her by now anyway. We're done here."

Just then, sirens sounded and the buildings reflected blue and red lights as police cars sped up the road. V had almost forgotten the alarm was still sounding.

"Damn," the woman holding V said, low and dangerous before throwing her and her compact forward . The three raced away. V almost followed, but the masked man in the tuxedo was grabbing jewels from the smashed display window and Sailor V could not let that slide.

He ran when he realized she wasn't chasing the other women, but V was right behind him. She threw herself at her compact on the ground and grabbing it, somersaulted forward. "CRESENT BOOMERANG!" She hurled the compact forward and sliced his leg, but he kept running.

However, she had managed to cut his pocket and a trail of diamonds spilled in his wake.

V was making sure the girl and her father were still alive when the cops reached her. They took her account and a few pictures and everyone congratulated Sailor V for saving the day.

Eventually she stole away and made her way toward her house. When she got closer, she ducked into an alleyway and dropped her transformation. She walked the last few blocks home as Minako Aino, Barefoot Middle Schooler in Pajamas. "Artemis…what just happened? Do you know who any of those people were?"

Artemis looked down. "I don't know. But those uniforms…"

"Uniforms?"

"Mina…I think you'd better sit down." He sat and motioned to a place on the curb next to him. "They have to be Sailor Soldiers. That's the only explanation."

"Sailor Soldiers…?" Minako echoed. "Like Sailor V? But I'm the only Sailor Soldier."

Artemis was very focused on a pebble. "There are more. I thought there were only four…the guardians of the princess…"

"Wait. I have _guardians_," Minako said jumping to her feet. She was pacing now and making wild gestures with her hands. "They sure as hell weren't doing a very good job at guardianing me! And where were they those two years I was fighting all alone? Where were they when Kaitou—" She stopped because her voice cracked and she was shaking too hard to keep talking. Suddenly, she grabbed Artemis, pulling him up to eyelevel and shaking him. "Huh, Artemis?! If you're so smart. Where. Were. They."

He scratched at her hands without any real malice. "Those weren't the Guardian Soldiers. I knew the Guardians. I _remember_ them. And stop shaking me! I got hit tonight too you know!"

She stopped shaking him, but she didn't apologize. She sat heavily and plopped Artemis down in front of her. "Alright taking cat, talk. I want to know everything you've been holding out on me."

"They were interested in the crescent mark on your forehead. I think, whoever they are, they're looking for the Moon Princess."

Minako stared at Artemis like he'd just spoke Swahili. "But I _am_ the princess."

The cat batted a paw at the sidewalk then looked back up at her with the guiltiest expression she'd ever seen on a small furry animal. "No, Minako, you're not."

_Tick_

The headlines that morning read: Sailor V Returns To Japan, Thwarts Jewel Thief And Saves Family!


End file.
